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The Nerd Network is teaming up with Belk Library to provide an evening of games, food, and community. A wide variety of board games will be provided by the Belk Library’s Instructional Materials Center (IMC), or feel free to bring your own. Appalachian State University students, staff, and faculty are welcome and the event is FREE.

Belk Library and Information Commons presents the Appalachian State University Global Film Series for Spring, 2015. The Global Film Series is a cooperative campus effort to provide a blend of cinema from around the world, in various languages, and representing a wide variety of cinematic genres. Based on input from students groups, faculty, and staff, we select current releases both educational and entertaining. In addition, the Global Film Series provides a platform for student groups and faculty to share their international experience, knowledge, and extracurricular opportunities through a variety of associated activities.

Two Million MinutesWednesday, March 25, 20157:00 p.m. I. G. Greer Theater Co-sponsored by Belk Library & Information Commons and AIESEC at Appalachian State

City of GodThursday, April 16, 20156:00 p.m. Greenbriar Theater in the Plemmons Student UnionCo-Sponsored by Belk Library and Information Commons and Festa do Brasi

You are cordially invited to participate in a discussion with Anthony Clark, the author of The Last Campaign, How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity & Enshrine Their Legacies, a book about the politics of presidential libraries.

Anthony Clark is a recognized expert in the Freedom of Information Act, federal records, and presidential records and libraries, he has been interviewed about presidential libraries by Roll Call, Reuters, Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ), the Chicago Tribune, New York Public Radio (WNYC), and Lettera43, the Italian news magazine. He is an alum of Appalachian State’s Department of Government and Justice Studies. He earned a Master's degree in Management & Systems from New York University and spent eighteen years as an information technology consultant.

Mr Clark is a former legislative director, speechwriter, and committee professional staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the 111th Congress, he was responsible for oversight and investigations of presidential libraries, the National Archives, and all federal information policy for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He writes about presidential legacy and Congress, and has been published by Time, Salon, and History News Network. His article on the George W. Bush Presidential Library was the cover story at Salon.com the day the library was dedicated in April, 2013, and was featured that evening in a segment on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."

The event is sponsored by the Department of Government and Justice Studies and the University Library. Feel free to bring a lunch though light refreshments will be available.

Enhance your information research skills and learn about library services, resources, strategies and tools that will save you time. Attend either or both workshops. Open to all students, faculty and staff. No need to register – just come!

Search Strategies – Thurs., March 19, 4:15 – 5:15, Rm. 028

Identify and search discipline-specific article databases and other resources to obtain the most relevant results; learn advanced search strategies and other tips; use services that allow you to tap into resources beyond those at ASU – at no cost to you.

How have the female characters in Disney animated films changed through the decades? Mukulika Dattagupta will speak about the shaping of a new identity of women in society and how Disney female characters reflect these changes throughout the decades. Focus will be on those films familiar to the audience and those that might act as markers in tracing this journey.

Ms. Mukulika Dattagupta is a Senior Research Fellow, School of Media Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She is currently researching at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C., as a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Scholar.

This Doorways program is co-sponsored by Belk Library and Information Commons, the Office of International Education and Development, and the Reich College of Education. Its goal is to provide a platform for people to share their research and knowledge on international issues and build relationships based on interest in international affairs.

For more information on this program or the Doorways Series, contact Beth Cramer at 262-4967 or crameree@appstate.edu

February 23-27 is Fair Use Week! Fair use is a concept embedded in U.S. law that allows certain uses of copyright-protected material without the permission from the copyright holder. Fair Use Week is an effort by universities and library organizations to celebrate this important doctrine and to inform and empower students and faculty. There is a handy infographic that provides an overview of fair use concepts and your rights.

There are no hard and fast rules for what constitutes fair use, but in determining whether a particular situation is fair use or infringement, courts use four factors which can be remembered by the acronym PANE.

Purpose - The purpose of the use (e.g. commercial vs. educational)

Amount - The amount of the material used (the greater the amount copied, the less likely it is fair use)

Nature - The nature of the copyrighted work

Effect - The effect of use on the potential market for or value of the work

The ebook experience can be pretty painful. So here's a suggestion that works for our 2 largest ebook sources, ProQuest ebrary and EBSCOhost. Use them by the chapter. It's fairly easy to open a chapter and download it as a pdf, just as you would a journal article.

One word of caution. For my example, I downloaded the exact same chapter 7 from the same book, once in ProQuest ebrary and once in EBSCOhost. ProQuest ebrary tried to download the entire Part 2 containing several chapters. I had to look up and enter the page numbers instead. But the newly redesigned interface was so responsive, that only took a few extra seconds.

We hope that library ebooks improve over the next few years. For now, we are leasing thousands of ebooks, but we also continue to buy thousands of traditional physical books.

Appalachia News Sources in NewsBank offers access to 357 publications from northern, central, and southern Appalachia. Find full-text articles on local news, issues, events, people and much more from current and archived issues from sources such as newspaper articles, transcripts, videos, blogs, magazines. Updated daily, it includes obituaries, editorials, announcements, sports, real estate and other sections.

Some of the features include setting up email alerts for the latest news on a topic, saving searches, and emailing articles to yourself or a colleague.

Coverage dates: 1980 – current.

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Please note: Online databases and resources are, in almost all cases, only licensed for use by ASU students, faculty, and staff.

Explore, identify and search discipline-specific article databases and other resources to obtain the most relevant results.

Learn advanced search strategies and other tips.

Use services that allow you to tap into resources beyond those at ASU – at no cost to you.

Learn Zotero, a free online, citation management tool. Zotero allows you to easily collect and store citations for books, articles, web pages and more; cite-as-you-write to insert in-text citations within a document and use the collected bibliographic citations to create your bibliography.

Pre-Requisites for Zotero Session only

Bring your laptop, if you use one. Before Base Camp download and install Zotero 4.0 for Firefox. It works seamlessly. You may choose to use a different browser later – the concepts learned will be the same.

Update your Firefox browser so you are using a recent version, 29 or higher.

With the success of Tech Open House last year, we decided to put on another exhibit showcasing the digital technologies available in Belk Library during spring semester. Join us for our Tech Showcase on February 3-5, 2015 from 10 am to 4 pm in the Atrium of Belk Library and Information Commons.

Digital technologies change at a rapid pace. New gadgets and devices are cropping up all over the place. How are you to keep up with all the changes? Where can you go to learn more about your favorite electronic device?

Staff in Belk Library's Technology Services are on the bleeding edge of the latest in digital technologies. During the Tech Showcase, they will be available to demonstrate such things as 3D printing, Oculus Rifts, Makey Makey, and more.

Stop by and get answers to those nagging technology questions, or suggest ideas for workshops you would like to see in the future.